Pershaw sighed. Uncharacteristic of him to sigh, Lanja thought. "We are Clan. We can only follow the rituals as prescribed. I would rather hang him by his thumbs from a yardarm or stick his head through stocks or even burn him at the stake."

Lanja laughed suddenly. "Just what are you talking about?"

"Those were old forms of punishment, of humiliating the chastised. You do not think Jorge deserves this punishment?"

"I did not say that. I merely said he was proud."

"But was that not admiration in your voice?"

"Was it? Perhaps so. There is something admirable in being able to wear the dark band proudly."

"Then the punishment has failed, has it not?"

"I did not say that. You are merely expressing your own worries, quiaff?"

"Aff. I think the man possesses some strange core that is unpunishable, that cannot be humiliated."

"And you do not admire that?"

"No, I do not. I do not."

They might have continued this conversation, and perhaps found themselves wading in dangerous waters, if a messenger had not delivered the communique from the Wolf Clan invaders.

* * *

Aidan's walk back to the barracks where his Star was housed was agonizing. One after another, as if the call had gone out to form a gauntlet for Aidan, trues stared at the dark band when he passed. Sneers, anger, taunts, crude joking remarks rained down on him. Aidan shut off his mind as best he could and strode with his eyes fixed straight ahead. He knew that if he looked even once into the eyes of any of the trues who were insulting him, the anguish of his shame would drive him once more into the kind of fight that Pershaw and the law of the dark band expressly forbade. Rebellious as he was, even he must accept any ritual that symbolized the way of the Clans.

Horse stood at the door of the barracks, watching the final steps of Aidan's proud walk. A few trues were now stalking his every step, hurling new taunts at him. Horse came out to join him.

Though they could speak no words, Aidan knew his friend was silently saying, "Ignore them," as he came close.

"I will," he said fiercely to himself.

Horse joined him and the two walked together into the barracks. The taunters stayed for a while, making the gesture of the coward in the direction of the barracks. The gesture involved placing one's hands in succession over the face, the throat, the chest, and the genitals. The trues eventually tired of the game, and began to drift away. Their raucous laughter drifted back on the wind for a long while after they were out of sight.

Aidan remained silent for even longer, staring straight ahead, unwilling to look down at the dark band. Horse reclined on a bunk, also keeping quiet. Finally, Aidan spoke:

"I think I must kill Kael Pershaw."

Horse shrugged. "That may be so. But I think this is not the right time."

Aidan smiled. Horse's laconic comments often amused him. "You mean, while wearing the dark band? Just after killing another true?"

"Something like that."

"Perhaps a time will come ..."

"You're not a murderer."

"I was not one. Perhaps I am now."

"There is a book among your books about a man who plans and carries out a murder, and then cannot live with himself."

"Yes, I know. There is a moral to it, but I never much believe in the morals from books. They do not seem to apply to our lives."

Horse shrugged again. "Maybe so."

"But maybe not?"

"Whatever you say."

"Sometimes, friend Horse, you seem to speak in codes."

"Maybe."

Horse's half-smile made Aidan laugh. He kept laughing until his hand accidentally found the dark band and its silken texture. Was it his imagination or did it deliberately press against his chest, constricting his breath?

"We have to get away from here," Aidan said. "Get to some duty that—"

"You told me that the next time you started bemoaning our lives on this backwater planet I should remind you that you had vowed to stop."

"Horse, you always—"

He was cut off by the strident blare of an alarm klaxon. It was sounding off in long, steady tones, a signal that the base was under imminent attack. Reacting instinctively, Aidan and Horse grabbed their battle gear from their lockers as the rest of the Star assembled.

"Horse," Aidan said, "I think we may finally be getting some action."

"Don't bet on it."

Sometimes Horse could be irritating, and no more so than when events proved him correct, as they were about to now.

4

Aidan was convinced that even the furniture selected for freeborns was carefully, and cruelly, chosen by the trues. As he stared at the video monitor, watching the start of the formal declarations of the Trial of Possession, he could not sit still. His body sought some comfortable position in this yellow plastic deformity but found only resistant bumps and a teurvature that could only have been meant for some upright lizard species. Each bump and curve was yet another reminder of all the ways trueborns treated frees as inferior.

"How do youmanage it? Sitting in these things?" he asked Horse, who seemed quite comfortably ensconced in his chair.

"I beat the system by convincing myself that all discomfort is comfort, for discomfort is all that a freeborn is ever allowed. It's a kind of perverse utilitarianism."

"Util-"

Horse put his finger to his lips, a signal that he had learned the word from one of Aidan's secret books. Aidan smiled. He knew there was probably no reason to keep the books a secret. Most trueborns would find Aidan's penchant for literature a curiosity and do nothing about it, but some were ornery enough to search out some law somewhere that would let them confiscate the material. It was better to hide the books. They had, after all, been hidden in the first place. Most warriors were not casual readers, anyway. Technical manuals, military strategy treatises, and endless quoting of The Remembrancewere about their speed. Aidan was a great admirer of the latter, the Clans' major epic poem, but it could sound grotesque when recited by some of the trueborn warriors whose rough voices and indifference often diminished the poetry.

Aidan had discovered the books in the hideaway of a Brian Cache, one of many underground shelters for BattleMechs and war materiel. One section was devoted to a vast supply of computers and data banks. These must have been from the days when the great and noble General Kerensky had ordained that his people must preserve the knowledge and data they had brought with them from the Inner Sphere. Each skilled person, whether warrior or technician, then recorded what he or she knew into the computers of the Brian Cache.

One day Aidan had been on duty in a Brian Cache, attempting to relieve his boredom by studying the boxed disk-files of information. Behind a shelf, in what appeared to be a temporary wall, he noticed a rectangular section that seemed lighter in color, as if a picture had once hung there. There was no interior decoration in the entire Cache, so Aidan reckoned the rectangle served some other purpose. When he gave one corner a push, it slid open. Inside were several boxes, filled with real paper-and-ink books. Not disks, not printouts, not manuals, but the kind of books that, according to legend, might be found only in the quarters of the highest-echelon personnel. With the help of Horse and others in his command, he had discreetly moved them to his own cache, a narrow false wall in the freeborn barracks. Since then he and Horse had been devoting their rare free time to reading them. The books had certainly helped him endure the painful duties of Glory Station and the antagonism of its commander.